«By the God.» Abivard echoed. That burly, great-mustached man in the gilded armor- Now, at last, Abivard rode out ahead of his escort. He raised his voice: «Romezan, is it really you?»
The commander of the Makuraner mobile force shouted back: «No, it's just someone who looks like me.» Roaring laughter, he spurred his horse, too, so that he and Abivard met alone between their men.
When they clasped hands, Romezan's remembered strength made every bone in Abivard's right hand ache. «Welcome, welcome, three times welcome,» Abivard said most sincerely, and then, lowering his voice though no one save Romezan was in earshot, «Welcome indeed, but didn't Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase, order you to stay in the westlands?»
«He certainly did,» Romezan boomed, careless of who heard him, «and so here I am.»
Abivard stared. «You got the order-and you disobeyed it?»
«That's what I did, all right,» Romezan said cheerfully. «From what you said in your letter, you needed help, and a lot of it. Sharbaraz didn't know what was happening here as well as you did. That's what I thought, anyhow.»
«What will he do when he finds out, do you think?» Abivard asked.
«Nothing much-there are times when being of the Seven Clans works for you,» Romezan answered. «If the King of Kings gives us too hard a time, we rise up, and he knows it.»
He spoke with the calm confidence of a man bom into the high nobility, a man for whom Sharbaraz was undoubtedly a superior but not a figure one step-and that a short one-removed from the God. Although Abivard's sister was married to the King of Kings, he still retained much of the awe for the office, if not for the man who held it for the moment, that had been inculcated in him since childhood. When he thought it through, he knew how little sense that made, but he didn't-he couldn't-always pause to think it through.
Romezan said, «Besides, how angry can Sharbaraz be once he finds out we've made Maniakes run off with his tail between his legs?»
«How angry?» Abivard pursed his lips. «That depends. If he decides you came here to join forces with me, not so you could go after Maniakes, he's liable to be very angry indeed.»
«Why on earth would he think that?» Romezan boomed laughter. «What does he expect the two of us would do together, move on Mashiz instead of twisting Maniakes' tail again?»
«Isn't this a pleasant afternoon?» Abivard said. «I don't know that I've seen the sun so bright in the sky since, oh, maybe yesterday.»
Romezan stared at him, the beginning of a scowl on his face. «What are you talking about?» he demanded. Fierce as fire in a fight, he wasn't the fastest man Abivard had ever seen in pursuit of an idea But he wasn't a fool, either; he did eventually get where he was going. After a couple of heartbeats the scowl vanished. His eyes widened. «He truly is liable to think that? Why, by the God?»
For all his blithe talk a little while before about going into rebellion, Romezan drew back when confronted with the actual possibility. Having drawn back himself, Abivard did not think less of him for that. He said, «Maybe he thinks I'm too good at what I do.»
«How can a general be too good?» Romezan asked. «There's no such thing as winning too many battles.»
His faith touched Abivard. Somehow Romezan had managed to live for years in the Videssian westlands without acquiring a bit of subtlety. «A general who is too good, a general who wins all his battles,» Abivard said, almost as if explaining things to Varaz, «has no more foes to beat, true, but if he looks toward the throne on which his sovereign sits…»
«Ah,» Romezan said, his voice serious now. Yes, talking of rebellion had been easy when it had been nothing but talk. But he went on, «The King of Kings suspects you, lord? If you're not loyal to him, who is?»
«If you knew how many times I've put that same question to him.» Abivard sighed. «The answer, as best I can see, is that the King of Kings suspects everyone and doesn't think anyone is loyal to him, me included.»
«If he truly does think that way, he'll prove himself right one of these days,» Romezan said, tongue wagging looser than was perfectly wise.
Wise tongue or not, Abivard basked in his words like a lizard in the sun. For so long everyone around him had spoken nothing but fulsome praises of the King of Kings-oh, not Roshnani, but her thought and his were twin mirrors. To hear one of Sharbaraz' generals acknowledge that he could be less man wise and less than charitable was like wine after long thirst.
Romezan was looking over the field. «I don't see Tzikas anywhere,» he remarked.
«No, you wouldn't,» Abivard agreed. «He had the misfortune to be captured by the Videssians not so long ago.» His voice was as bland as barley porridge without salt: how could anyone imagine he'd had anything to do with such a misfortune? «And, having been captured, the redoubtable Tzikas threw in his lot with his former folk and was most definitely seen not more than a couple of hours ago, fighting on Maniakes' side again.» That probably wasn't fair to the unhappy Tzikas, who had problems of his own-a good many of them self-inflicted-but Abivard couldn't have cared less.
«The sooner he falls into the Void, the better for everybody,» Romezan growled. «Never did like him, never did trust him. The idea that a Videssian could ape Makuraner manners-and to think we'd think he was one of us… not right, not natural. How come Maniakes didn't just up and kill him after he caught him? He owes him a big one, eh?»
«I think he was more interested in hurting us than in hurting Tzikas, worse luck,» Abivard said, and Romezan nodded. Abivard went on, «But we'll hurt him worse than the other way around. I've been so desperately low in cavalry till you got here, I couldn't take the war to Maniakes. I had to let him choose his moves and then respond.»
«We'll go after him.» Romezan looked over the field once more. «You took him on with just foot soldiers, pretty much, didn't you?» Abivard nodded. Romezan let out a shrill little whistle. «I wouldn't like to try that, not with infantry alone. But your men seem to have given the misbelievers everything they wanted. How did you ever get infantry to fight so well?»
«I trained them hard, and I fought them the same way,» Abivard said. «I had no choice: it was use infantry or go under. When they have confidence in what they're doing, they make decent troops. Better than decent troops, as a matter of fact.»
«Who would have thought it?» Romezan said. «You must be a wizard to work miracles no one else could hope to match. Well, the days of needing to work miracles are done. You have proper soldiers again, so you can stop wasting your time on infantrymen.»
«I suppose so.» Oddly, the thought saddened Abivard. Of course cavalry was more valuable than infantry, but he felt a pang over letting the foot soldiers he'd trained slip back into being nothing more than garrison troops once more. It seemed a waste of what he'd made them. Well, they'd be good garrison troops, anyhow, and he could still get some use out of them in this campaign.
Romezan said, «Let's clean up this field here, patch up your wounded, and then we'll go chase ourselves some Videssians.»
Abivard didn't need to hear that notion twice to like it. He hadn't been able to chase the Videssians in all his campaigning through the land of the Thousand Cities. He'd put himself where they would be a couple times, and he'd lured them into coming to him, too. But to go after them, knowing he could catch them «Aye,» he said. «Let's.»
Maniakes very quickly made it clear that he did not intend to be brought to bay. He went back to the old routine of wrecking canals and levees behind him to slow the Makuraner pursuit. Even with that, though, not all was as it had been before Romezan had come to the land of the Thousand Cities. The Videssians did not enjoy the luxury of leisure to destroy cities. They had to content themselves with burning crops and riding through fields to trample down grain: wreckage, yes, but of a lesser sort.